Meatless Mondays

Even if you are not vegan, or vegetarian, you may still consider integrating ‘Meatless Mondays’ into your weekly routine. For the intuitively challenged, that means, don’t eat meat on Mondays.

The meat industry is one of the top contributors to global warming, and Americans eat about twice the global average of meat. Livestock production creates more greenhouse gases than transportation, and takes up an enormous amount of land (about 30% of the remaining ice-free land according to the NY Times).

Raising livestock requires an extremely high amount of fossil fuels to feed the animals,, operate farm equipment, machinery, process, package, and distribute. Growing crops like corn and soy conventionally to feed animals produces greenhouse gas emissions through the use of pesticides, fertilizers, machinery and transportation, not to mention countless acres of farmland that could otherwise be used to grow food for people. Every year in the U.S., growing corn and soybeans – the main ingredients in animal feed – requires almost 270 million pounds of pesticides[11][12] and more than 21 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizer[13][14] which produce vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions in their production, transportation and application. (see Cool Foods Campaign).